This is nice, it's okay, but things like this have really decreased in quality and utility since Flash went away and the partial replacement of javascript took over. The old online-go "Learn Go" implemented in flash much, much better and more intuitive and interactive than this.
Learn to play Go
81–90 of 159 posts
Re: Learn to play Go
#82Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…
I think your valuing of moves is flawed. Yes, during the fuseki the best move may be worth 20 points. But there are often many moves that may be worth 19 or 18 points. So, playing perfectly only gains a few points compared to playing acceptable moves. In comparison, tactical situations often have a crucial move that wins many points - in low-level play swings of over a hundred points are not uncommon. There, missing…
And does this set of tutorials give any idea of "best" or even "acceptable" moves?
There's no discussion of 2-point jump, 1-point jump, horse-move, diagonal move, loose play or connected/strong play in this set of tutorials. Or the value of 4th row (center-oriented influence play) vs 3rd row (edge-oriented territorial play). I'm not seeing any discussion on invasions or defense of invasions.
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I'm like 9kyu. I'm no expert. But I'm certainly at the level where tactical geniuses beat me in many positions, but I just wreck a lot of n00bs in the opening, and hold out until the ending.
The good news about opening theory or middle-game theory is that if the opponent is playing tenuki (ie: they ignore your most recent move and play somewhere else on the board), you're probably focused on the incorrect area.
On the other hand, if you're up vs a weaker player, YOU need to be the one playing tenuki. Its surprising how awful players are at double-digit kyu is at this. You will only see tenuki opportunities if you have superior opening/middle game skills than your opponent.
Re: Learn to play Go
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only one way to find out. If you dislike chess because you don't like abstract total information strategy board games you will not like go. If you dislike chess because - it has too many rules, - the board is too smalll, - the pieces move around too much, or - it doesn't involve adversarial, collaborative construction, or any of the other things that make go different from chess, you have a chance of liking go.
> If you dislike chess because you don't like abstract total information strategy board games you will not like go I think that's why I don't like chess. It seems to me that a winning strategy would be to think as far ahead as possible by enumerating all the permutations. A few heuristics exist however.
FWIW this isn't a path to success in chess, at least not for a human. There's something like 31 average moves per position in chess. So calculating just 5 moves deep would be 31^10 or about 820 billion positions. In fact even just 2 moves deep would be 31^4 = about a million positions. I'm a relatively strong player and ballparking my speed by playing through the famous Morphy opera house game in my mind - I'm hitting around 2-3 positions per second, in a game I know intimately.
Progress in chess (and I assume Go) is about training your subconscious so that your mind naturally pushes you in the right direction with minimal effort. Think about something like writing. When you're writing something you aren't really thinking through each word in your vocabulary, comparing them, and picking one - it all just kind of flows without you even trying. The same thing happens with chess mastery.
This is why some people say you're not "really" playing chess before a rather high rating. Less experienced players will struggle to simply not leave material hanging. Then as they improve that will no longer be an issue but then they'll still struggle to avoid simple tactical ideas. But once you move comfortably beyond that phase, the game becomes much more about the things people want it to be about - strategy, plans, big picture stuff that's lots of fun. It's one of the way the game draws you in - it gets more and more addictive, and rewarding, the better you become at it!
Re: Learn to play Go
#84Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…
> To put it in perhaps more concrete terms: playing a "tactic" position may net you +10 points across a sequence of 5 moves or so. (IE: One well placed tactical move, and ~4 followup moves may capture 5 enemy stones + 5 territory simultaneously from your opponent). However, every single early-game move is worth nearly +20 points of territory if played correctly. I'm serious. I'm baffled by this comment. Both professi…
I'm about 9 Kyu, at least back when I was practicing and reading every day.
I'd say that at 9 Kyu level, my main gains were playing and abusing Tenuki. Refusing to respond to the opponent's (weak) early game moves and instead playing significantly stronger elsewhere on the board.
If the opponent were stronger than me, I'd pay attention when they ignored my moves. Its actually very difficult IMO to play sente every time as a double-digit kyu (or even high-single digit kyu). Recognizing that the last move wasn't forcing and that playing elsewhere is a surprising way to get ahead.
Vs stronger opponents who can tell when the board is sente, gote, appropriate to Tenuki, and is able to count up Ko threats... well yeah. I lose. But there's significant skill in this part of the game and NOTHING in this set of tutorials that teaches it.
Re: Learn to play Go
#85Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…
This is very different to my experience and I am wondering why. Maybe because I come from chess and can't help myself to compare it with this frame of reference. Anyway I felt that my progress up to 5k was largely driven by a better understanding of principles of plays than tactical training. As a thought experiment, I feel that its possible to adopt a very risk averse style that negates tactical complexities to the…
> Anyway I felt that my progress up to 5k was largely driven by a better understanding of principles of plays than tactical training.
Well yeah. But look at these tutorials. They're all local tactics. Nothing on early game or middle game strategy.
Despite dozens of tactical positions, I don't think a single one of these holds a one-point jump, two-point jump, horse move, diagonal move, 4-row move, 3-row move or similar pattern.
I'd say this stuff gets extremely important around 15kyu, where your tactical knowledge is passable (maybe not great, but passable). It becomes more important to move around the board with 2-point jumps, recognize sente vs gote and tenuki vs weak gote moves from your opponent.
Tactical knowledge will only get you maybe to 20kyu or 15kyu at the best IMO. Then you're forced to learn "squishy" and "opinionated" discussions that no one really knows how to teach. There's patterns (ie: 2-point jump or horse-move), but its not like there's any ground truth to knowing when these moves are appropriate.
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I guess people's point here is that if you choose a 2-point jump as a strategic connection when a horse-move was more appropriate, you might lose 1 or 2 points. But both of these moves are likely worth 5, 10, 15, or more points.
The more important bit is knowing when to play strong and connected (often because each move is strongly sente / has momentum and forces an opponent's response), vs when a sequence is gote and the opponent (or yourself) should consider a move elsewhere (ex: possibly start an invasion).
Re: Learn to play Go
#86Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…
I disagree. For very high level play, yes, opening theory matters. For beginners, rote "reading", i.e. playing out moves in one's head, matters much more. This is an unintuitive aspect of go because it is different from virtually every other strategy game. In most strategy games, "macro" (large scale logistics) is what determines winners at all levels of play, and then at higher levels where logistics skills are simi…
> For beginners, rote "reading", i.e. playing out moves in one's head, matters much more.
In Go, I think everyone feels like they're a "beginner" for years.
In my experience, absolute beginners (30kyu or weaker) should study tactics. You have nothing else to study after all and need a baseline. But even by 20kyu or 15kyu, you _WILL_ stall out and be unable to continue if you're unable to recognize when a 2-point jump, horse move, running on the 4th line vs 3rd line is appropriate.
And you probably should be studying joseki theory in any case, because you need to start the game with _SOME_ move. And then you need to connect your opening theory with different, strategic level moves somehow.
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Is it not strange to you that there's a 50+ set tutorials with not a single one discussing the 1-point jump, horse move, or 2-point jump, or diagonal move?
This set of tutorials gets to Tiger Mouth (they call it a "hanging connection, section 3.11) before it gets to diagonal moves (ie: never).
There's no discussion on the appropriateness to sacrifice stones to gain momentum or territory. Etc. etc. This is perhaps more of a 10kyu level concept. But seriously, some of this stuff (ex: 2-point jump vs horse move) is simple enough for a 25kyu beginner.
Re: Learn to play Go
#87Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…
Highly disagree. Fuseki (opening) doesn't matter much for most players. AI confirmed that a wide variety of openings, even weird ones far removed from the usual credo, work very well. At worst you may lose a couple points in doing so, but unless you play at a high level that's negligible and will never be the reason you lost. Joseki (corner sequences) is also not that important, and certainly not something any beginn…
These tutorials don't even teach horse-move, 1-point jump or similar movements though.
With so much emphasis on cut and strong play, anyone completing this set of tutorials is going to be an absurdly strong tactician and then lose 20 points as the opponent horse-moves around the board.
Surely you've played the beginner who favors tactics and capture at the expense of easily captured territory? Given this set of tutorials, do you think any beginner will understand sente, gote and tenuki? And even if a beginner somehow understood it, what basis of play will they have? There's literally no tutorial or discussion on walls, influence, 2-point jump, 1-point jump, strong vs fast play (etc. etc.)
Re: Learn to play Go
#88Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…
Far from it, there is no need to learn any joseki before dan level. It's even counterproductive often enough ("Learn joseki, lose two stones") before the player can study why each move is joseki and whole-board implications. A lot of it makes little sense before beginning to understand thickness and influence. A 1-dan should have strong enough tactics to play reasonable corner exchanges without any joseki knowledge,…
Opening theory might be somehwat counter-productive. But surely SOMEWHERE in this tutorial the 1-point jump, horse-move, and 2-point jump need to be discussed.
Re: Learn to play Go
#89Will I like go if I don’t like chess? Chess seems too one dimensional for me if that makes sense.
I like go and don't like chess, for the simple reason that getting good at chess requires a lot of memorization, while getting good at go doesn't. Having lots of openings and positions memorized to know the best moves automatically is not something that I personally find fun. In go there are some sequences of "standard" moves (joseki) but it's highly controversial whether memorizing them even helps at all, see anothe…
Opening knowledge in chess is almost entirely unnecessary below a rather high level, perhaps 2200+.
The reason less experienced players get obsessed with openings is because they make regular tactical mistakes in the opening, and then blame lack of opening knowledge, as opposed to their lack of tactical ability. In other words they try to memorize their way out of tactical mistakes, which is impossible. At that point, after it inevitably fails to work, they claim they've plateaued, lack the IQ, maybe the memory, maybe are too old, or whatever other excuse.
This is made even worse by the fact that opening knowledge is ostensibly easy to improve whereas tactical vision seems very difficult to improve. In reality it's the exact opposite. Exact opening lines will fade from your mind rapidly (though general ideas will stay with you forever - but that's another topic), whereas grinding tactics might not 'feel' like you've learned anything, but overtime will permanently train your intuition to where it needs to be to start seeing major gains.
On top of all of this - one could simply play 'freestyle' chess (the starting pieces locations are randomized) and suddenly there is 0 opening theory. But you'll find that your freestyle rating is going to be strongly proportional to your 'normal' chess rating!
Re: Learn to play Go
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. For very high level play, yes, opening theory matters. For beginners, rote "reading", i.e. playing out moves in one's head, matters much more. This is an unintuitive aspect of go because it is different from virtually every other strategy game. In most strategy games, "macro" (large scale logistics) is what determines winners at all levels of play, and then at higher levels where logistics skills are simi…
> This is an unintuitive aspect of go because it is different from virtually every other strategy game. No, it isn't. As a decent chess and go player I can tell you that they're both just tactics until you approach the master/dan level. And what is strategy if not just a longer form of tactical play? At the end of the day, strategic play is just play that sets up tactics later on. Or, to quote Fischer: "Tactics flow…
> No, it isn't. As a decent chess and go player I can tell you that they're both just tactics until you approach the master/dan level. And what is strategy if not just a longer form of tactical play?
You cannot tenuki in Chess.
In Go, especially at the 15kyu to 10kyu double-digit dan level, the opponents are full of opening and middle-game mistakes. The best response is often to ignore your opponent and play the most powerful move elsewhere on the board.
Knowing when to tenuki (ie: ignore the last move, play elsewhere) is a HUGE point in Go strategy. Its exceptionally difficult to play sente / forcing moves. Playing a sente vs gote sequence is what separates the 1-dan (experts maybe 1800+ Elo equivalent players) from the rest of us mere mortals. But recgonizing that the last move was gote (non-forcing) is maybe a 10kyu / 1200-Elo kind of thing.
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Chess is almost all tactics. Go on the other hand, is Strategic, as the concept of sente/gote/tenuki allows you to validly ignore the opponent's plan and work out your own plan.
You still need a solid tactical basis in Go. You cannot just run away from the opponent forever. But you might be surprised at how "valid" tenuki moves are.
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For me, the growth from 15kyu (maybe 1200 elo in Chess) to 9kyu was a strong focus on sente, gote, tenuki, strategy, joseki, direction of play, strong vs weak. All "strategic" play that often sacrifices local tactics for greater point gains elsewhere.
Indeed, "weak" play in Go (ex: a 2-point jump) is WEAKER in terms of tactics. You are explicitly making an area weaker and easier to kill in exchange for moving faster on the board. A 2-point jump will ALWAYS be the worse tactical choice than a 1-point jump or solid connection.
This isn't like in Chess where a sacrifice immediately becomes apparent either. It can take 50+ moves before a position is played out and the difference between strong-connected play vs a 2-point jump shows up.
In any case, even 20kyu beginners can improve their games if they play 2-point jumps (or other weak / loose patterns) appropriately. Yeah you need the basics of tactics there otherwise the 20kyu player just loses all their stones at all. But protecting your stones / strong play is actually very very weak and will trap you as a beginner. You MUST play faster (but weaker) connections if you want to break through double-digit-kyu. Players just get too strong by 9kyu or 8kyu to rely on tactics alone.